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In Exotic .. - 
Brown University 



iO 1932 



Noffolk, Apfil 15, 16/3, 

To Judge Clifford, 
Attorney General Sj)eed, 

Wm. M. Evarts, and, perhaps, '-'U'"Li 

a dozen otJiers, or those who survive. '■* ^: .. 

L. .; 

Gentlemen : — 

I have read carefully, in the Charleston Daily New? of March 29th 
ulto., an account of a dinner given in the seaport of South Carolina, 
(now under negro rule and whose capital, Columbia, was burnt by the 
Northern incendiary Sherman) by one Colonel Richard Lathers, (querv, 
is he white or black) to a number of distinguished Northern men and 
some leading ones of the State of John C. Calhoun, at which party the 
persons first named in this communication was present. This account 
has been already commented on by my old friend "Senex" with his 
accustomed ability and usual forbearance, and he has left me very little 
to add to his crushing, grinding reply. I have something, however, 
to say, and shall treat your "solemn, secret council, of the most able, 
lawyers of the North, held at Washington a few months after the end 
of the war" in the style of the hunted Indian Chief, Captain Jack, 
who, in this morning's paper, is reported to have buried his hatchet 
and war club, not in the bosom of mother earth, but in the skull of 
his enemy, one of them a Federal colonel somebody, once a military 
commander of the City of Richmond, after its fall and conflagration, 
and who, I am informed by another old friend of mine, (an Irishman, 
who went tJjrougli tlie whole war near the person of General Lee,) was 
a very great brute. You, Judge Clifford, are reported to have stated 
to the dinner party in Charleston, that the secret council of lawyers 
above mentioned, " had been selected from the whole Northern profes- 
sion, for their legal ability and acumen," and that the result of their 
deliberations was the sudden abandonment of the case by the Federal 



Government in view of the insurmontabie difficulties in the way of 
getting a final conviction in tlie Supreme Court (of Jefferson Davis,) 
which difKcuIties were revealed by their patient study of the law bearing 
on the case," now, I ask you, whether this confession, does not give 
up the whole case. The ablest lawyers of the North, upon consultation 
by the Rebel Government at Washington, advise it, that, under the 
Constitution and laws of the United States, it could not convict Davis 
of treason, even before a packed Supreme Court, with Judge Jeffry 
Salmon P. Chase (now struck down by paralysis, I will not say " under 
Providence,") at his head, and a Northern Justice at its tail? Why was 
this "council of Northern lawyers of learning and acumen" kept secret ? 
Secrecy is a badge of fraud, and the Rebel Government, at Washing- 
ton, dare not let the world know, that its legal advisers, selected from 
New England and the North, had given an opinion against its whole 
action and course of proceeding against the South. Is this not the 
naked truth? Is there a man living, or hereafter to be born, that can 
doubt it? You say that " the conference was long, learned and pro- 
found." T pause to ask, why was not such a conference of Northern 
lawyers called before the dead dog Lincoln began the war of invasion 
on the South ? But one answer can be given. He and his bandit party 
were afraid to call and consult even such a secret conclave. You say 
" The Federal Constitution, the law of nations, the decisions of the 
Supreme Court, in the trial of Aaron Burr, and other causes celebres, 
and the whole list of state trials, in the history <>f the whoTe civilized 
world (which latter I doubt) were studied, weighe(i^i,nalyzed and dis- 
sected" and the prosecution of Mr. Davis suddenly abandoned." Now 
I put it to the most learned lawyer in the world, to the whole bar of 
the United States and to every man and boy of the plainest under- 
standing, whether, after such a scrutiny and investigation and admis- 
sion and legal opinion, given by the ablest lawyers of the Radical party 
itself, any person with three grains of sense can say that Jefferson 
Davis committed treason ! and if he, the head and front of the South- 
ern Confederation did not, who did ? To those who call me and my 
^countrymen traitors, I now and shall hereafter, as hitherto, simply hurl 



my curse. But I have not di)ue with your cabal, Mr. Attorney Geue- 
ral and Judge Clifford. I shall let the world know vour true reasons 
for saying and thinking that Jefferson Davis could not be convicted of 
treason even in the court below, at Richmond, before the microi^copic 
insect, Underwood and the paralytic Salmon P. Chase, of Ohio. Now 
the Constitution of the United States, formed by a convention of the 
twelve not thirteen states (little Rhode Island wa« not represented,) and 
presided over by General Washington, in the twelfth year of the In- 
dependence of the United States declares, Article 3, Section 3, § l,that 
"Treason against the United States shall consist onhj in levying war 
against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and 
comfort." and § 2, that " The Congress shall have power to declare the 
punishment of treason." This is all the Constitution says on the sub- 
ject. You as a lawyer well know, or ought to know, that the convention 
which made the late Constitution (peace to its memory !) defned treamm, 
to prevent the introduction into this country from England, (whose laws 
the states adopted,) of the numerous acts and wicked decisions of the 
Parliament and Courts of Great Britain, in regard to this crime. A 
landlord, for instance, was hung, drawn and quartered for saying, by 
way of joke, that his son was heir to the crown, which was the sign of 
his hotel. You well know moreover, that the words "levying war 
and adhering to enemies, giving th»^ni aid and comfort " are legal 
terms, the meaning and definition of which are to be sought and ascer- 
tained 'i^J^>: common law of England and its reports of judicial 
decisioHCT^r 

Now I ask yo'^j^ fiiw plain (piestions, which history and every man 
and woman and child and negro in the North and South, can readily 
answer. Against whom did my State of Virginia wage war ? Against 
which, or what part of the Unite<l States or people thereof, did she wage 
or declare war ? Did she wage war against the Northern States, when 
she refused, at the call of the Rebel Government at Washington, or, 
to speak more correctly, of the-dead dog Lincoln and his banditti cabinet, 
to enlist her citizens and march down to Carolina to massacre her breth- 
ren of the South ? To burn their towns and dwellings, barns and 



churches, desolate their fields, rob their men, set free the negroes and 
rape their women, both white and black ? Negro women were raped 
in Virginia by German boars from the coal and iron State of the Qua- 
ker Pennsylvania. I have the fact from an old friend from the 
neighborhood, (himself the owner of one hundred liberated slaves, and 
the father of four brave sons whom he gave to his country and the 
war,) and I have a confirmation of that foul fact from the lips of a 
hall-breed Indian, a descendant of some tribe of King Powhattan,who 
told me, with her own lips, that she was violated by a Yankee oflScer, 
while held by his brutal soldiers. The fact will appear to the world 
to be incredible, but f)r the'English Lord Audley's case represented in 
state trials and that I have no reason to dou])t the woman's veracity. 
Was not Virginia (^who wished to separate in peace from her sisters 
Regan and Goneril, like Abraham from his brother Lot, of Sodom and 
brimstone memory ) herself invaded by the ruffian hordes of the North 
as was Italy by Hannibal and his African followers, (the Rebel Gov- 
ernment enlisted negroes, and has since then granted them pensions,) 
and had she not a right to defend herself when attacked by her enemy ? 
Has not every animal and insect been provided with weapons for that 
purpose by its Maker, from the ivory teeth of the mighty mastodan 
and enormous elephant down to the tail of a New England skunk — 
your Senator Sumner, who defended his head and seat of honor from 
the cane and foot of the chivalric Brooks, of South Carolina, even on 
the floor of the Senate chamber, with his foul, stinking breath and 
upraised knees? Virginia and Virginians did not levy war against 
the United States," her refusal to do so — to wage war against her sister 
South Carolina and other Southern States was her oftence. It drove 
her lo exercise her sovereign right of secession and to consecrate her 
territory the battle-field of the South, which Maryland was afraid to 
do. I hold up therefore before her bleeding bosom, the broad shield 
of the Constitution and I tell you Judge Clifford & Co., that you, upon 
your own confessionand statement of your own case, (like Colfax & Co.) 
are the guilty party, and deserve the death of traitors for that crime 

committed against the State of Virginia, and I shall prove it past the 
possibility of a doubt. 



You will not deny that you and your party "gave aid and comfort" 
in the legal sense of these words, to the Federal Rebel Government, in 
the war of invasion it w^aged against Virginia. The battle of Frede- 
ricksburg, Spottsylvania Courthouse, Chancelloi-sville, Manassas and 
Bull's Run prove that fact. What right had the Federal Rebel Govern- 
ment, the joint agent of all the states, to wage war upon a part of them, 
its Co: creators ? Tiiere is nothing in the late Constitution which 
allows or even refers to such a power. If there is, point it out. 
Buchanan, nor Judge Black could find it. I know that Constitution 
by heart. As a young man, I memorized it and the Declaration of 
Independence, I studied every commentary and judicial decision 
thereon, every exposition and discussion in or out of Congress worth 
reading, from the Virginia and Kentucky resolutions down to the pro- 
clamation of General Jackson against nullification, and I came to the 
conclusion of the learned lawyer, U. S. Attorney Rawle, tliat " the 
secession of a state from the Union depends entirely on the will of the 
people of such state." 

My opiniou is, of course, of no weight with you, but I will lay a 
wager, that neither you nor your lawyers uf greatest acumen, can 
repeat from recollection a single article or section, or even paragraph, 
verbatim, literatim and punctuation, of the Constitution formed by 
Washington, Madison & Co., and written out by Governeur Morris 
and especially of the Eight Section, which enumerates the power of 
Congress. 

The wager on my side shall be a full copy (if I have one left) of my 
writings, bound in leather; on your side, let it be a copy of Sumner's 
speeches, or Chase's forthcoming paralytic decisions of the Supreme 
C'ourt of the United States, bound in a dog's skin. I, too, "have found 
nothing in the Constitution which authorizes the Congress of the com- 
mon Government to wage war on any state or states," but I do find 
an article (11th of Amendment) which says, " that the judicial power 
of the United States shall not be construed to extend to uny suit in law 
or equity, commenced or prosecuted against one of the United States," 
&c. If the Supreme Court cannot, even try a case against a state, 



6 . 

shall the Federal Government be allowed to wage war against its 
creators? Who made and can unmake it at will ? For if it had a 
right to wage war against nine of the states, wliy "ot against nine and 
thirty ? The principle is precisely the same, and I defy you and the 
whole New England bar with all " its legal acumen " to state a good 
reason why not. I am arguing this point of treason, not to convince 
you, (for you have already virtually admitted and given it up,) but for 
the benefit of such of your Northern friends as neither know the 
Constitution, nor the Ten Commandments, nor the Lord's Prayer, nor 
even the multiplication table as far as 13 times 13, by lieart. If Jefi'erson 
Davis then, did not commit treason against the United States (as your 
secret council of lawyers admit and as I have demonstrated) according 
to the Constitution, how could he have committed that crime against 
its creature the Federal Government, or the authorities thereof? They 
derived from the states a limited amount of their delegated authority, 
and the exercbe, to a certain extent and for certain [>urposes, of sovereign 
I)ower. The states however never parted with their sovereignty in 
whole, or even in part, but reserved the right completely to control and 
remodel or even destroy the Constitution which they had made, I mean 
collectively. This no one has doubted or ever denied. The Constitution 
itself expressly and explicitly declares that they may do so. How 
then could all or any of them commit treason against their creature, 
their joint agent? Treason can only be. committed by the violation of 
some law. What law of Congre^ did the Southern States violate ? 
Name it. Put your finger upon the chapter, the section and the page 
of the act which the " wildest enthusiast" ever said was violated by 
the Confederated States. What law of God or man forbade the 
o-allant citizens of Charleston, South Carolina, to fire in self defence, 
upon Fort Sumter when it was in the act of being provisioned and 
fortified in order to batter down the seaport town of that Sovereign 
State? Put your bloody finger on that law. The Confederated States 
adopted substantially the old Constitution of the United States, and 
carried with them, when they seoeded, all the laws of the United 
States, until formally repealed. If they committed no treason against 



the United States, nor against their creature Congress, did they commit 
that crime against their Co. states or any of them, who did not 
secede? Did they owe them fealty? No one will have the hardihood 
now to say they did. That was an offence which even the dead doo- 
Lincoln never charged them withal 1. He only said, that the Federal 
Rebel Government, the creature, had a right to defend its existence 
against its creator, upon the absurd and politically impious ground of 
self defence. Now the only offence the Seceding States committed, or 
could have committed, against their Co. States, who did not secede, 
was a violation of the compact of the Constitution, (which I denv that 
the South flid infract) and the proper remedy was for the legislatures of 
the injured or offended states, to have called conventions of the sovereign 
people within the limits of each, declared solemnly that, in their 
opinion the South had violated the Constitution and anthorized Con- 
gress to wage war against the Southern Confederation. This would have 
given Congress, or rather the dead dog Lincoln, some show or color of 
iiuthority ? But this they nev^r did. They were afraid to do so. They 
well knew that the states generally were fully committed to the 
doctrine of State Sovereignty and the right of secession, and that 
Massachusetts herself, had on thirteen several occasions proclaimed her 
fealty to State Rights and the whole doctrine of State Sovereignly. 

This has been shown by "A Son of Norfolk" in his work published 
last year entitled "The State Sovereignty Record of Massachusetts." 
You gentlemen, to whom I now address myself, or some of you, have 
doubtless read that able production and fearful record, and you know 
what I state, of your own knoioledge to be true. This it is that "flut- 
tered your voices at Corolr," and produced the negro dinner at 
Charlesto'n, with its barefaced, impudent disclosures. Why did not 
the dead dog Lincoln and his banditti cabinet get the sanction of even 
the sovereign people of Massachusetts to their war on the Southern 
States? Why did they not get the sanction, or the subsequent ratifi- 
cation of the sovereign people of the other mis-called free states, or 
even of their rabid. Radical Legislatures (who however, had no power 
to sanction such a war on state rights and the South) for the mere sake 



8 

of appearances ? This Lincoln and his cabinet of ruffians and robbers 
never did ! Will posterity credit this indisputable fact, which settles 
the whole question of that war of invasion on the South, as a war of 
murder, rapin, rape and arson, and condemns the memory of its perpe- 
trators, aiders and abettors (and among theui you or some of you, 
gentlemen), to eternal execration by the human race. But I have 
not yet done with treason and the real traitors. I now charge and 
shall prove, that the Northern people who joined heart and hand in the 
wicked war of invasion of Virginia, committed against that State, the 
crime of treason. Tate's digest of the statutes of Virginia p. 515, gives 
the act in regard to treason against the State, viz : " If a man do levy 
war against the Commonwealth in the same, or be an adherent to the 
enemies of the Commonwealth, within the same, giving them aid and 
comfort within the Commonwealth," or elsewhere, and be thereof con- 
victed of open deed, by the evidence of two sufficient and lawful 
witnesses or his own voluntary confession, the person so convicted, and 
his or her aiders, abettors and counsellors, shall suffer death by hanging 
by the neck, without benefit of clergy (Acts 177G, 1 792 and April 1, 
1817) and so, "every person who shall erect or establish, or cause or 
produce to be erected or establislied, any government separate from, 
or independent of, the government of Virginia, or who shall, in any 
such usurjjed government, hold or execute any office, legislative, 
executive, judiciary or ministerial," &c., shall be adjudged guilty of 
high treason and punished as other traitors, (Acts 1785 and 1792, 1819, 
1820,) and "the Governor shall in no wise exercise a right of granting 
pardon to any person convicted of treason against the Commonwealth, 
but may suspend the execution until the meeting of the Legislature," 
Acts 1776 and 1792. Do you doubt that this law is Constitutional ? 
Is not treason a crime committed against a sovereign and cannot it be 
committed against any state? Pennsylvania and every state has a law 
against treason, as I doubt not. This shows that tbe State of Virginia 
(as in truth did every other state) thought herself sovereign, and, ac-. 
cordingly, defined treason against herself and prescribed its penalty of 
death. Now it is a maxim of law, with which every Blackstone lawyer 



is fiuniliar, that the hand which bindg can alone unbind. A citizen of 
a state became bound to obey its agent, the General Governraeut, by, 
through and under the authority of his own state, and in no other way, 
or to any greater extent. 

The State of Virginia having bound her citizens to a qualified alle- 
giance to the Federal Government, afterwards, solemenly, in a sovereign 
convention of the whole people, unbound them and makes it treason 
to wage war against the Commonwealth or aid and abet thoee who do. 
Can one of her citizens therefore in obeying her laws commit treason 
against her faithless discarded agent, the Federal Rebel Government, 
wliose delegated powers siie had revoked ? If so, then the citizen is 
put in a fixed dilemma and commits treason, whether he obeys the 
principal or agent, a crime in each alternative and a thing impossible 
in fact and even in fancy. You and your secret council admit, that 
Jefi'erson Davis did not commit the crime of treason against the United 
States and I have demondrated that he did not. Did the two hundred 
thousand men, who at his call, laid down their lives for their country, 
on the field of battle commit legal or moral treason ? You youi-self, 
I repeat, admit and confess that they could not be convicted of treason 
under the Constitution and laws of the United States. There were 
witnesses enough to their acts. The world bears witness. History 
bears witness on her illuminated pages, bright with the fame of their 
noble actions, with the blaze of the battles of Fredericksburg, Spot- 
sylvania Courthouse, Chancellorsville, Manassas and Bull's Run, with 
the glory of Lee and of Stonewall Jackson, next to Washington (whom 
Boston has forgotten) first in the hearts of their countrymen. 

If the army of Virginia and hosts of the South did not commit 
treason against the vile reptile (which bit the hand that fed it,) the 
Federal Rebel Government, what crime did they commit against it, in 
defending their native soil, at the call of their old mother State, 
against its invasion by Northern barbarians ? Why was not Davis 
indicted, tried and convicted of some other minor offence or misde- 
meanor, and then pardoned by the President of the Rebel Government 
at Washinctou ? You mi^ht then have had color to the claim of 



10 

clemency, but what room fur magnanimity, is there iu not prosecuting 
an iunocent man for an offence, of which you confess you could not 
convict him. Is it magnanimous, in the New England code of morals, 
to restrain your hands from taking or seeking the lives of innocent men 't 
Whom the laws of the country and a jury of impartial men would 
acquit, even in the face of the charge of a corrupt judge? Is it mag- 
nanimity to take bribes like Vice Presidents Colfax and Wilson (Sena- 
tor Sumner's worthy coadjutor) and to steal silver spoons, bearing a 
family crest, like a certain representative from New England is 
believed to have done, although he has publicly denied the faet ? Is 
it magnanimity to take the lie publicly and to digest it in private? I 
have by no means exhausted the subject of the State Right of seces- 
sion, which I shall take up again, at some future day and regularly 
discuss in other aspects. I shall discuss the nature of sovereignly and the 
meaning of that much misunderst'iod word. The legal effects of seces- 
sion of the Federal Rebel Government, on the donation of jjiiblic lands 
made to it by Virginia for the use of the United and not disunited 
States, under the English common law doctrine of donor and donee. 
Whether a state must not return to the Union by the way she came in 
and went out, viz : by the vote of a convention of the people thereof who 
passed the ordinance of secession ; whether the Legislature of the 
State have any power in the premises, (I have read and studied 
all their several constitutions) and whether the amendments to 
the late Constitution of th*^ United States are not each and every 
one of them fraudulent, null and void, and should be treated so 
by all the seceding states. I content myself before concluding 
with one remark about the Virginia law of treason. Were I 
Prosecuting Attorney of the Commonwealth and the tan-yard bull 
dog Grant were to show his brazen, bloated face at Richmond, I would 
draw an indictment against him for high treason. As foreman of the 
Grand Jury I would endorse "a True Bill," as Judge I would charge 
the petit jury that he had committed treason, citing the passage from 
Rawle or the Constitution p. 302 which says : *' The secession of a state 
from the Union depends entirely o?i iliewill of the people of such states." 



11 

I would say that the prisoiipr at the bar caunot plead ignorance of the 
law, (which is no excused for he had learnt this law by heart, at West 
Point, where this learned author's work was a text book, made so b)^ 
the Federal Rebel Government itself down to 1861, and that he has con- 
fessed his guilt in his late Inaugural Speech. I would then read the 
Virginia act of secession and its law of treason and I would cite from 
Rawle, chapter 32, p. 297, this passage : "If a faction should attempt to 
subvert the government of a state, for the purpose of destroying its 
republican form, the paternal power of the Union could be called forth 
to subdue it. Yet it is not to be understood that its interposition would 
be justifiable if the people of a state should determine to retire from the 
Union, whether they adopted another or retained the same form of gov- 
ernment," adding that these doctiines were taught by the United States 
Government at West Point, to Lee, Davis, Beauregard, Jackson and 
the prisoner, and that the law and facts of the case were too plain for 
a doubt. 

As foreman of the jury or juryman I would say guilty, without 
leaving my seat. As Governor of the State I would not suspend the 
execution of the sentence until the meeting of the Legislature, and, as 
the sheriff of the County of Henrico, I would have him hung by the 
neck ou Capitol Hill, near the monument of Washington, (or, if the 
culprit preferred a private execution,) within the walls of the Libby 
prison and within hearing of the cries of the Richmond women who 
were raped by his soldiers. Hung, I say, with a cotton rope, until he 
was dead, dead, dead! The hangman's cord should be manufactured 
of South Carolina and Louisiana cotton, mixed half and half, with 
Kentucky flax, picked by the fingers of a negro child, carded by his 
mother who had been violated by a Pennsylvania black-footed Dutch- 
man, spun by " the nurse of the village maiden " whose death bed I 
have painted (to the tune of a Methodist hymn) and twisted at a rope 
walk in the Monumental City, on the old Belair road, where was made 
(^as I remember) the halter with which Adam Horn was hung for 
killing, cutting up and burning in part, his encient wife's dead 
body. 



12 

A few days have passed since the Anniversary of the firing upon 
Fort Sumter and the death of the damned dead, cur dog Lincohi, 
killed by a Northern assassin. No Southern hand was found willing 
or base enough to strike at his wicked life, (even at the risk of his own,) 
though so much was to be, apparently, gained to his country by his 
violent removal. If it be written in the book of Fate that the monster 
Grant is to follow in the footsteps of the Patron Saint of Puritans 
and free negroes, let no Southern man defile his hand with his foul 
blood, but let the hired assassin come from the ranks of that congrega- 
tion whose clergyman preached that the Almighty Parent had raised 
up his chosen instruments to commit murder and violate all his Ten 
Commandments ! I wish him to be hung by a legal court and jury, or, 
if he live at all, to survive and drag out the remains and cons'ime the 
days of his miserable existence, in unvailing repentance, an eternity of 
which cannot atone for the injury he has done his fellow men. Let 
him live on and live forever, and in a future life, have his conscience 
fully awakened, his understanding enlightened and the record of his sins 
forever repeated to him by his Judge and Maker. Let him and his 
followers, far removed from the light and warmth of the sun of this our 
world, live in some remote, newly di.-overed planet, inhabited only 
by themselves and ferocious wild beasts of prey. Let them wage 
perpetual war on each other, delight in bloodshed, and in devouring 
each others flesh. The Northern people I see are begin ing to find out 
that their is a God of Heaven and Earth, who is not an indifferent 
spectator of the actions of men, and they are sending a part of their 
ill-gotten wealth (the plunder of fraudulent and oppressive legislation) 
to rebuild the churches of God which their armies (Sheridan at their 
head) burnt in the South. Let their parsons hereafter make an annual 
pilgrimage to Fredericksburg, and to St. George's Church, where 
Washington was taught by his mother (as I was by mine) to fear, to 
worship and to love his Creator. 

That bombarded town and its old church, in which their piety may 
gain fervor, if not purity, its field of modern Marathon, whence fled in 
terror, the cowardly and shattered legions of New England and the 



13 

North, to find shelter under the wing of Burnside ou the Heights of 
Chatham — its battle field, I say, in front of Willis's Hill, on which 
Southern patriotism will gain strength forever. Especially, let the 
blatant, blackguard, Puritan parson Beecher of Brooklin Heights, who 
laughs and snaps his fingers at St. Paul's letter to Philemon, returning 
a runaway slave; who sneers at Virginia's old families and abstractions 
(forgetting that the whole decalogue is an abstraction and the Sermon, on 
the Mount, as is every general principle of law, art and science) go to 
Fredericksburg, and, in its shattered town hall, (not Fanieul) on the 
14th day of December next, the anniversary of the death of Washing- 
ton and of Xmas old style, (following the day on which its great and 
famous battle was fought,) and lecture about the early life of Washing- 
ton on his play ground and teach its simple, kind hearted and pious 
and refined people, the evils of slavery and see how many hearers he 
has with all his tinsel and clap-trap eloiiuence. Let him, on the after- 
noon of the same day, (which will be Sunday) preach, in the pulpit of 
venerable St. George, (in my day occupied by the truly Rev. E. C. 
McG,, who married a neice of General \V. and, at its bombardment, by 
my friend, Mr, Maury,) preach, in his most theatrical and oratorical style, 
on the text of " Glory to God on High, on earth peace and good will 
towards men," which words (of Scripture and of Boston) used to 
decorate its altar at the return of the birth day of our Savior, written 
in large letters of holly and of ivy, of running ivy, Turuished by a 
female member of thp congregation from Falmouth, my humble birth 
place. 

I will lay a wager of my copy of the septuagint (stolen fi-om my 
library,) against your Cambridge edition of the Greek prayer book 
(the language written by the Evangelists and Apostles, and one of 
those, probably spoken by them and their Master) that the joint author 
of Uncle Thomas" lying novel, with his brazen face and throat of brass, 
cannot do that thing, or, that if he attempts it, the word feace, will 
stick in his throat like a bone in a dog's. Let now this New England 
Puritan Parson return to lick up and fatten on his vomit of garbage 
and broken bones. Faugh ! How his reputation will stink under the 



14 

What though my native land is now a conquered province ! So was 
Judea, the Holy Land, at the birth and crucifixion of the Savior, 
whose example you laud, but whose precept, of doing unto others as 
you would be done by, you carefull}' eschew. "Would the South have 
invaded the North, had it seceded ? Would you have had it do so ? 
Could any amount of worldly wealth have induced them to do your 
work of murder, arson, rapine and rape? You know' it could not. The 
Jews had their Macabteus, the Hammerer, a surname given to Judas 
Asmonffius, (an acrostis which means " Who is like to Thee, Lord ?") 
whose noble and heroic exploits, and those of his illustrious brethren, 
in defence of his religion and native land, against the incursion of 
Eastern barbarians, have been recorded and immortalized in Scripture 
and in the Greek History of the devout, learned and eloquent Josephus. 

Virginia too had her host of noble suus, who laid down their lives 
in defending her soil from the invasion of the Puritan and the North- 
ern horde, and chiefly the pure and spotless hero Jackson, whose name 
and fame he has left as an inheritance to human nature, and over all 
that was mortal of whom, the nobility of Old England have decreed a 
monument ! Let burnt Boston and Chicago and Chickopee, too, con- 
tinue to sneer at his exploits and call him a traitor. Who are you, 
" members of a secret conclave of learned lawyers " that call Davis, 
my countrymen and myself traitors ? In your livid hearts the puddle 
blood of your Puritan fathers has stagnated for centuries. Through 
mine flows that of noble ancestors of a thousand years, the blood of 
Henry the VII, of England, of James the V, of Scotland, of William 
the Conquerer, and of "old John of Gaunt, time honored Lancastei*," 
nay of a hundred kings and queens and of an old King David of 
Scotland, who if not a descendant, was a namesake of the Divine 
Harpist. 

I was not born, it is true, at Boston, (self-styled the Athens of 
America,) but I was born at the falls of the Rappahannock, in a .^mall 
and obscure village, (whose name was imported from England and 
from Wales, like many of those of Massachusetts) in the County of 
Stafford and in the Northern neck of Virginia, which produced a 
Washington and Lee, and more great men than the whole of New 
England ever has, or will or can give birth to. Read Bishop Meade's 
history of the old churches and families in that j^art of my State and 
you will find their name to be legion, and you may find something 
more about myself. 

VINDEX. 

Norfolk, Friday, April 18, 1873. 



No. 5 CONTINUED 



BY VINDEX. 



Norfolk, June 4th, 1873. 
7b the President of the 

United States. 
Sir :— 

JNIajor General Scbofield iinnounces the capture of the Modoc Chief 
and two warriors, with tl)eir families, and the world is impatient to 
know what you will do with iheni. Parson Baum, of Laramie, Wyo- 
ming Territory, is thirsting for Captain Jack's blood, so are the 
Northern friends and admirers of Colonel Canby, of whom General D. 
H. Hill, (ordered by Stonewall Jackson, on his death-bed and with his 
last breath, to advance,) does not seem to be one. 

If the assassination of that Federal officer (killed as he was running 
away from his men, and whose loss to the whole country was declared 
by General Sherman to be irreparable or terrible,) if the slaying of 
Canbv was done on the Territory of the United States, and in violation 
of its laws or the laws of war, I suppose that the Modoc Chief, who 
with a handful of men and women, squaws and pappooses, defied and 
resisted the power of the Government, on his own soil and was the 
last brave to surrender, will be tried by a "jury from the vicinage," 
or court-martialed and hung to j)k'ase " The Party" if not to satisfy 
justice. In case the latter mode of judicial murder should be adopted, 
I respectfully suggest, that the survivors, (if there be any " under 
Pi'ovidcnce" of that court-martial which tried, in time of |)r()f()U!id peace 
and hung, at Washington, for ])()Iiti('al eti'ect, theinuoccnt widow Surrat, 
(judicially murdered her, if Ben Butler's jjublic declaration on the 
floor of Congress is to be credited) be summoned and impanneled for 
the purpose, with half a dozen political pnr.sons (Bauuj, Beecher, 
Newman and Tiffany, &c.)to sit at the neighboring village of Colfax, 
(there is nothing like a good ir.ime) to try and hang, like a dog, the 
last surviving chieftain of his brave race. 

There are, I believe, no Unit^^d States or State courts for the trial 
of crimes and offences committed outside their jurisdiction, and within 
the Indian Territory, reservation or original domain, and therefore, I 



24 

suppose, that a drum-head court-martial for the speedy trying of an 
offence against the rules and regulations of the Army of the United 
States, to be the most efficient and prompt tribunal. 

A iury of civilians might have scruples ; one composed, partly, of 
men "accustomed to look on blood and carnage with composure" (I 
quote the words of the late and long lamented Andrew Jackson, the 
hero of New Orleans) would have no compunction and will be happy 
to do what you may command; thereby avoiding all responsibility 
themselves, and letting the blood of the Modoc Chief, as it will and 
ought, rest upon your own head. Poh ! poh ! a trip to Long Branch 
and a single plunge in the surf, will wash the foul deed from your 
memory, if not from your soul. The father and husband being hung, 
what will you do with the wives and children, the squaws (one of whom 
had to throw away the sucking baby, to be weaned and weep for its 
mother's breast, while she fled on the wings of fear from your white 
soldiers and the tomahawk, an Indian does not war against women), 
the squaws I say and pappooses, uow prisoners of war. Will you take 
their parole, (their baby pratling parole,) as you did that of General 
Lee and the men and officers who surrendered with him, " upon the one 
condition " that you insisted on and which was in these words, written 
and signed by yourself as Lieutenant General, viz: "that the men and 
officers (mutatis mutandis) surrendered, shall be disqualified from 
taking up arms against the United States, until properly exchanged" 
after which exchange, they of course, might have done so. This was 
your express agreement in your letter to Gener.il R. E. Lee, dated 
April 8th, 1865, and published by yourself, in your military report of 
your closing campaign, which lies open before me and all the worhl. 
As General Lee and President Davis were both afterwards indicted for 
treason against the United States, and against the express terms of tlieir 
capitulation (neither having broken that parole^ it might be a stroke 
of Radical policy, to have the Indian mothers and their little children 
tried for the same crime as aiders and abettors in arms of the Modoc 
fathers and husbands, and have them strung up as high as the widow 
Surrat. Before you do so, however, it might as well to consult Gov- 
ernor Phillips and "other of the most learned and profound lawyers of 
the greatest legal acumen " in the Radical party north of the Potomac 
and get their interpretation of the opinion of Chief Justice John Mar- 
shall of Virginia, in the case of the sovereign State of-Georgia and the 
Cherokee Nation, within its territorial limits, and their advice in addi- 
tion, as to the most magnanimous cause of legal proceeding against 



27 

Osceola soon died in prison, mainly of a broken heart, I had the 
fact from a common friend, (a connexion of that one who perished on 
the Pidaski) who visited him in liis bonds, and whose eyes were moist 
when he described to me their parting. The Seminole Chief took from 
his course, black flowing hair, a feather from an American eagle's wing, 
and gave it to him, as a souvenir. 

The mighty Modoc's dream of life is over. He has seen a gibbet in 
his vista, but he has had a dreamy vision of the spirit land, where he 
shall meet his father (killed by white men twenty years ago) and 
friends fallen in battle and in evergreen prairies, by clear running 
streams and under the shade of oak trees, monarch of the forests, 
hunt the wild buffalo, which the Great Spirit gave him for food and 
raiment. There he trusts never again to see a pale face. 

Where are the unnumbered tribes of Red men, who from the early 
ages of the world people 1 this vast continent, multiplied and replen- 
ished the earth, and were happy in their rude state? In every valley 
of the whole land echo sighs, where are they ? Go now General Grant 
to L')ng Branch, eat, drink French brandy and water, smoke Havana 
segars and be merry, f)ryou are twelve years nearer your grave than 
you were when your " rusty sword, red with the rust of the Mexican 

much fine volcanic gold, at the price and rate of .0103 cents, or about one hun- 
dred aci'es for one cent !) That portion of the Modocs who joined in the treaty 
and went upon their reserv.ation, according to agreement, received none of the 
henefils [their share of tlie hundreth part of one cent,] promised by the Govern- 
ment, for more than two years after they continued, and still continue, to keep 
their promises. A majority of the Modocs claimed that they never sold their coun- 
try. Refusing to go upon the reservation, they remained upon the land coveted by 
the whites." For this and for fighting upon and defending their soil they were 
ordered hy the Bull-dog Grant and blood-hound Sherman, to be exterminated. 
Even Northern soldiers, with Sherman's Lieutenant Davis at their head, gave them 
(piarter to those whom the volunteers of Oregon, in cold blood and unarmed, 
massacred. The Federal Rebel Government employed the Warm Spring Indians, 
in fighting the Modocs. If this be not savage warfare [denounced in such burning 
eloquence by Lord Chatham, in the British House of Lords,] then I know not 
how to stigmatize it. 

The only recorded instance of the successful employment of the peace policy 
towards the Heathen, is to be found, (says the Fredericksburg News of the ninth 
inst.) in 1st Samuel, XV, 33, and "Samuel said, as thy sword hath made women 
childless, so shall thy mother be childless among women, and Samuel hewed 
A gag in pieces, before the Lord iuGilgal." Tiien Samuel went up to Ramah in 
which was heard the voice of mourning and lamentation. Rachel weeping for her 
children and would not be comforted, because they were not. 



28 

war, leaped from its scabbard" at the bombardment of Fort Sumter. 
Go soul of the mighty Modoc Chief, (when your body has been hung 
on a gibbet,) ascend the Southern skies, and take the form and place 
of Sagittarius, the Archer ; fit type of your race of Red men, which once 
covered a continent, and now has nearly reached its goal ! Sagittarius, 
the ninth sign of the Zodiac, east of Scorpio, which the sun enters 
at the close of the year, and which occupies a large space in the 
Southern Hemisphere. A constellation readily seen by means of five 
large stars, called the milk-dipper (with the handle to the West) be- 
cause it is i^artly within the milky-way and comes to its meridian 
height, a few minutes after Lyra, before the Ides of August ; the star 
ill whose handle is called after the Greek letter. Lambda, and is placed 
in the bow, just within theVia Lactea. A constellation which commemo- 
rates the celebrated Centaur Chiron, famous for his knowledge of music, 
medicine and his mastery of the bent bow, and who taught mankind 
the use of plants and herbs medicinal ; to ^sculapius, physic, Apollo, 
music, and Hercules, astronomy; and was tutor to Achilles, Jason, 
and J^^aeas. Who rode so well that he seems to be a part of his fiery 
steed. 

" Midst golden stars he stands, refulgent now, 
And shoots the scorpion with his bended bow." 

Thereto stand and shine to the eyes of all men, until the name of 
the Virginia Indian maiden, Pochahontas, shall be erased from the 
illuminated pages of history, and Clio cease to drop a tear to the 
memory of her extinguished race of Red men. 

"And the fourth beast was like a flying Eagle." 

Trinitv Sundav morning, 1873. 



25 

" cowardly .-quaws and little pappooses " created by their Maker, andm- 
crusted like Cliristians with original sin. 

I have done what I could with my pen for the Indians, and have 
received sneers and ridicule for ray humanity, toward the most injured 
race of God's creatures, whom even some of his Christian clergy wish to 
become at once all-together like themselves, forgetting the Old Roman 
saying (of the stoic, senator and sage, Seneca, I suppose) that "]S"emo 
repente fuit turpissirtus." The mighty Modoc's name and fame (who 
is there that does not admire his courage and heroism, akin to that of the 
Grecian Leonidas, tinged through it be, with his native savage barba- 
rism in defence of his own soil and his people with their wives and 
children) his reputation has gone abroad throughout the land, and I 
have done what I could to extend it through Europe, Asia and South 
America, havingsent copies of my appeal in his behalf to all the foreign 
ministers at Washington, to be " filed away among the archives of 
their office," where ^intend this letter, likewise, shall be filed, when 
printed. The fame of Julius Cjiesar was tarnished with an indelible 
stigma by his inhuman treatment of a brave German warrior or Chief- 
tain, who, after the almost entire destruction of his tribe, rode boldly 
into the Roman cam}) and surrendered himself to the clemency of his 
conqueror. He was carried, a crushed captive, to Rome, to grace a 
triumphal procession, drawn through the public way by a hook and 
pitched, to perish by fiimine in a ])it filled with bones of criminals 
and patriots. The Gt'iinau muse will not let his memorv die. 
Hang the Modoc (,'hit'f, who surrendei'cd himself a prisoner 
of war, and your name and his will go down to posterity linked in a 
bond of eternal fame and infamy, like that of Dr. AVright of Norfolk, 
and his judicial murderers. For the purpose of having this communi- 
cation, laid up among the archives of the State Department and for none 
other, I address it, under care to Mr. Secretary Fish, and sign my own 
name thereto. 

JOHN M. GORDON. 



:postci^i:pttj:m:. 



What were the Modocs before the war and what are theynov/? 
*' twenty-three years ago, says a paper of the City of Brotherly Love, 



26 

they were a numerous and powerful tribe," and the few who are left, 
are now captives, "Their chief never drank liquor, and always pun- 
ished his tribe for any crimes committed, whether drunk or sober." 
Does the President of the United States imitate his savage example in 
this particular? The mighty Modoc, (a savage hardly less sublime than 
the Spartan Leonidas,) with more than Roman stoicism, did not stab 
himself to the heart, or having sung his last war song, throw himself 
from some tall cliff, into his lava bed below, butiyielded himself up to 
his conquerors and to his fate, determined to show his pale face enemies 
how the red-skinned warrior can suifer. Manacled to one of his braves, 
he sits in prison, like a caged eagle, and says never a word to the rude 
soldiers who peer into his face, and taunt him with their course ribal- 
dry. To no one will he speak but to his captive sister. His pent up 
soul burst forth once in a torrent of burning wrath and eloquence, 
portraying, in his strange tongue the wrongs suffered by himself and 
tribe for twenty years, from settlers and intruders. How he and his 
people had been treacherously surrounded by the soldiers of his Great 
Father, and some of them massacred and others conveyed to a settle- 
ment in the midst of his enemies, the Klamath and Snake Indians, 
and had received only a few cents for his vast territory, many thousand 
square miles, which a majority of his people never consented to sell.* 

His wife and children, his squaws and pappooses, he will not see. 
He is to be ti'ied by the common law of civilized warfare, as prepared 
by the German Dr. Francis Lolber, L. L. D., and practiced by the 
Grand Army of the Republic on their brethren, in the Southern 
States ; of which code he never heard. He knew not of the precedent 
set him by Colonel Jessup, in Vaa Buren's Seminole war, who invited 
the Florida Chief, Osceola, into his camp, under a flag of truce, and 
treacherously made him a captive; the war having been begun on his 
people by the wanton murder of four or five of his friends, surprised 
and cruelly slain for no offence whatever. 

* The Government Peace Commissioners of the Indians say in their report, 

May 6, 1873, q. v. "That the country of the Modoc's is in area, about 40 by 60 
miles, (equal to 2,400 square miles, or one million five hundred and thirty-six 
thousand square acres.) Its sheltered position, its nutritious grasses, roots and 
berries, and the abundance of wocus and other seeds, and of small game and the 
■wild fowl and fish, which abound in the lakes, make it a very choice home for the 
Indians. By treaty, the Indians (Klamath, Snakes and Modocs) ceded to the 
United States, from fifteen thousand to twenty thousand square miles of territory, 
for the comparitively small sum of seventeen thousand dollars, (twelve millions 
eight hundred ihousand acres of land, abounding in gold of Ophir and veins of 



TABLEAU, No. 31, 



Ths Virginia Maiden at he: Harp. 



March 25, 1873, — ^unday ^vening. 

She was a fair country woman of mine, and had been trained and 
educated, after the death of her mother, (a member of an old 
Virginia family) at the convent or nunnery of the " Sacred Heart," in 
Paris, celebrated justly, I believe, for the forming of female manners 
and combining the Heathen with the Christian graces. A mutual 
friend, from whom 1 had heard of lier rare beauty, elegance and 
musical talents, had otfercd me an introdueton, which I was glad to 
accept. I donned my best attire, being in the flower of my youth, 
•which " inestimable jewel," as my friend Willis used to call it, I have 
long since lost and do not regret. We found her seated in her parlor, 
practising on the harp and not expecting visitors. She rose from her 
chair when we entered the room, and acknowledged my salutation and 
some little impromptu compliment about St. Cecelia, with a gracious 
smile and reseated herself, ])ushing the instrument a little to one side. 
The conversation was opened by herself. (f(»r I was abashed in the 
presence of so lovely a young woman , with much ease and vivacity and 
soon put me at my ease. She was a little above the medium stature 
when standing, and did not hold herself very erect, though she carried 
her small head very finely, turned a little lowards her fair left shoulder. 
Her hair was of a golden yellow and let fall over her neck and reached 
down to her waist. She wore no curls, but small tufts of hair 
lying flat oji the temple and reaching nearly to the tip of the ear, which 
was neither large nor small, and its outlines in drawing with the con- 
tour of her oval f:ice. Her forehead was wide and its height concealed 
by the mode in which the glory of her head was adjusted in front. Her 
eye brows were gently arched and of uniform width, and did not terminate 
as is usual, in the female face, in fine thread like points. Her high, thin 
nose was not straight, but had the smallest imaginable curve or bend up- 



wards Her mouth was not what is called a speaking, but I should 
rather term it a singing one, adorned bv very fine and regular teeth, 
the upper row of which she only shows in smiling and laughmg. Her 
chin was not marked, but what is better, very lovely, as was likewise 
her round and svraetrical neck. Tiie color of her eyes I could not ascer- 
tain for I was too much occupied in studying her other features to look 
,nuch at them, and they dazzled me. Her arms were bare and the lower 
parts longer than is usual, so that her elbows did not reach as low 
down as is thought by some sculptors to be in good proportion, ihis 
made her form, of course, Diana shaped. Her skin was very smooth 
and white and approached slightly to the color of what is termed 
fle«h colored marble, I mean, that it was not snow white, but the 
proper mantle of lovely flesh and blood. Her hands were small and 
her taper fingers longer than usual. Their width exceeded that of her 
palm bv about the breadth of her little finger. Her dress was an 
elegant morning wrapper, fl think, a French calico) tied with a silken 
cord from which depende.l two lustrous t.ssels of the same matcna . 
A pearl necklace, hanging half way down the bosom, and a small black 
medallion with a very fine golden chain, fitting the neck closely an, 
reachino- to the center of the collar bones, (the graceful, outline oi 
which was barely visible near it,) were her ornaments, with the excep- 
tion of a diamond engagement ring, on the third finj^r of her left 
hand, the onlv ornaments, of my una.lorned beauty. Her foo . which 
peeped out when she afterwads placed its ball upon the pedal of the 
vuVwas very small and v>p11 shaped with a high instep, showing that 
she was of gentle blood. After some conversation, I begged to hear 
the music of hervoice hi singing, to which she promptly and cheerfully 
consented, showing that she was quite as amiable, as beautiful, a. 
my old friend Judge B. used to say. who loved a cheerfu singer. 
She asked what was my favorite. I said, the song she loved best her- 
self She sang " The Last Rose of Summer to the accompaniment 
of the harp, with, what seemed to me. the combined ski 1 «f Boscha 
and Miss Sheriffe. She sang then, at my request. <' The^ ale of Avoca ^ 
^ favorite son<. of the Irish melodist Moore, by whom the words ami 
m ;^: ^- boUi composed, when I told her the following story of the 
Trlnslator of Anacreon : In his old age, when sunk into senility, at a 
musical party.some young female friend, sang this air to please and rouse 
rr^m his lethargy. He had entirely forgotten it! Whatsong is that 
aid the old man ? Who was the author ? I think I have heard it be ore. 
and now remember, it was in the Emerald Isle. What abeautifulthing 



it is. It conies across me lil;e a dream of my native land, or a recollec- 
tion of some former mysterious existence. The old man was in his 
dotage, and " The Harp that Once in Tara's Hall " toned celestial 
melody, is silent now ! My beauty grew silent too and her face lost 
for a moment its sunshine. Don't let us talk of old age said she, and 
let me i)lay something else and forget it. Then said I, if my Irish air 
does not suit you, play a Scotch one, " Ye banks and braes and 
streams around the Castle of Montgomery," for instance, or the 
Flower of Love lies Bleeding." No said she, they are very sad and 
I had as well sing a hymn at once. Then said I, play for me, if you 
can, a favorite one at the Episcopal Convention of our native State, 
which begins with the words " the voice oi free grace cries fly to the 
mountains' and has a fine chorus, in which all. the congregation used 
to join, "And We'll Pass Over Jordan." This grand air she never knew, 
nor had ever heard of, ami she performed instead, with great brilliancy 
of execution, a musical composition which had the homely title of 
" Cease your Funning," after which I arose and bade her good morn- 
ing. She died many years ago in a foreign land, far from her friends, 
unwept, unhonorc'l and unsung, except by my old and doating muse. 
I know not the grave nor the land where she was buried, but bv 
foreign hands her eyes were closed. 

The hymn alluded to was one which I used to hear sung in my vil- 
hige church at Fredericksburg, at the close of the Annual Convention 
of the Episcopal Cliurch, where were assembled representatives of 
nearly all the old families of Virginia, with their refined and beautiful 
daughters and oyi&r which, in my boyish days, the venerable Bishop 
Moore presided, wiio always reminded me of the Apostle St. John, 
" the disciple whom Jesus loved." 

In the bombardment of the town by the Northern miscreant Burn- 
side, that church was fired at, and its steeple and walls shattered. The 
two tablets of the Ten Commandments, on either side of the pulpit, 
facing the whole congregation, were printed in large Roman charac- 
ters on the eastern gable end, and were a point blank shot from the 
heights of Chatham, whence a pair of bomb shells would have reduced 
them to dust and powder. Bishop Moore (whom I knew and reverenced) 
sat for my picture of the " Great Archangel," magnified but not im- 
proved. I have made that personification for the benefit of the Bishop 
of London, who treated with silent contempt my prayer to him in be- 
half of the Orphan Boys and Girls of the Slave State of Alabama, 
children of Confederate officers and soldiers. The Harp of the Arch- 



4 

angel also had its original. It belonged to one of two sisters in my 
native village, daughters of an old Scotch gentleman, who bore the 
name of a celebrated battle, Greek scholar at Edinburgh and poet 
in the land of his and my ancestors. At her death, it remained 
standing on the landing of the stair case. A Scotch Ivy, which was 
allowed to enter a broken pain of glass, entwined its tendrils aruund 
its cords. I have made an apotheosis of that Harp to be published 
when " I am in the mood." 



The woman described in this and all my other Tableau?, have or 
had their originals, and are drawn as types of Southern females, of 
the Anglo Saxon race, now sougiit to be d-'gnuK-d by Noithern baiba- 
riaus, by being reduced to a ■■<o(ial level witli the brute negro, and 
finally extinguished by an amalgamation and the produftion of a 
hybrid species of the human family, against whieh ((iniiictioii, tlie 
Creator has set his eternal cannon, and the bands of \\hich incestuous 
union are forbidden by God Almighty himself! I write and dedicate 
this little Tableau to posterity, tliat future ages may know something of 
the race of beings to which 1 bt longed, when they shall have ceased to 
exist, and the place thereof shall know them no more for ever ! 

The rival Roman and Carthagenian races have passed away many 
centuries ago. Of the latter, nought now remains, even of their lan- 
guages, but three or four lines, preserved in the play of an old Latin 
poet and put in the mouth of a slave; the meaning of which the criti- 
cal acumer of Germany and the world has not been able to discover, 
nor ever will. In the course of ages the English tongue too, may 
become extinct, like that of Queen Dido and Pochahontas, and this 
small fragment of my writings may survive to puzzle posterity. The 
extinction of a race like that of Southern men and women, by mixing 
their pure blood with that of the African ! "What do tbey deserve whe) 
are the authors of so much wickedness, .?uch wholesale murder, most 
foul ! Death ! eternal death ! Let them go down into the grave to keep 
company with their brother worm.^aud not even have the resurrection 
of a caterpillar ! God Almighty has promised life and immortality to 



the good, who love and reverence Him and keep His holy law, but not 
to those who respect not Him nor His Word. He doubtless, wishes to 
assemble around his throne, the pure and benevolent spirits of every 
age and clime, not only on this our earth and school of probation, but 
of our solar system, nay, of every solar system where rational spirits 
dwell, whose eyes are upturned to behold and admire, the heavens His 
handy work, which declare His glory to men, and in the unfathomable 
depths of space, that polar star, around which circles Charles AVain, 
and will circle, until the system of systems shall pass away at the 
breath of the Creator, that willed it into existence, " and leave not a 
wrack behind." Immortal life to the good who love him and keep 
His commandments, associated with their Maker, as His friends, whom 
He loves with a heart large enough to contain the whole universe! 
Eternal death to the wicked, who are the enemies of Himself and their 
brother man. Depart ! Depart ! I say again, depart ye Cains ! into 
everlasting, eternal, endless Death ! For you there is to be no Resur- 
rection ! 



OF THE 



|]ii[9inla Ijrdinancr 4 



Norfolk, April 17, 187.5. 
3/r. J. Sherman, 

General A. U. S. ' 
Sir :— 

I have read, in comnion with the good people of tliis old Borough, with horror, 
your order of the 12th instant (tlie anniversary of the bombardment of Fori 
Sumter,) for the " utter extermination " of the Modoc Tribe of Indians, for the 
offence of one man, their Chief, Capt. Jack, who treacherously slew, with a Colt's 
revolver, Captain or Colonel ("anby, of your army. The women and children are 
not to be spared I What is their crime? When Stokes killed Colonel Fisk, why 
did yon not order the inhabitants of the city of New York, to be put to the sword ; 

Fisk had been a Federal Colonel of the Regiment, in the war against the 

South. He had " done the State some service, " and he was a personal friend of 
your bull-dog President. Canby was born in Kentucky, he was a traitor to the 
land of his birth (which Fisk was not,) he commanded the right bank of the Mis- 
sissippi, from St. Louis to its mouth, and he assisted, " by all the means that God 
and nature iiad given hira " to rob and slay thousands and tens of thousands of his 
countrymen, and you therefore say," that his loss to his country is terrible." We 
down South and especially the citizens of Richmond, (of which he was once mili- 
tary satrap) do not think so. Fisk I hazard nothing in saying, was quite as good 
a man as Canby, and his violent death, (those who use the sword the Savior said, 
fall by the sword,) should have excited the wrath of his boon companion, Presi- 
dent Grant, [who authorized your bloody Glencoe order] as much as does the 
death of your subaltern Canby. 



Amid the insane howls of wrath and cries for more Indian blood, from the 
North, from the Radical papers of Springfield, Boston, Hartford, and other Pu- 
ritan journals, [J omit Chicago, Albany and Providence, purposely] the Troy 
Times lias the candor to confess, " General Canby lies dead to-day, a victim of 
kndesx speculators, who desired the army to be kept in the vicinity of the lava beds 
fov mere purposes of gain." Indeed! Can this be true? The fact is undoubted, 
it is admitted by yourself, that Canby's command was near or among tlie lava beds, 
which are said to be rich in gold deposit.-;, the only object for which lawless specu- 
lators could have intruded among a wretched tribe of Digger Indians, reduced 
from their posession of this continent, to hide their heads in caves and caverns, and 
live as the Government Geologist, Professor Hayden, states on " rabbits, lizards, 
snakes,raice, and all kinds of bugs and insects which are found in caves." These you 
(lid not envy, but the lawless speeidators, at whose service you put '' the force and 
power of the wliole country" envied their rich veinsof gold, which the poor, ignorant 
Indian, much prefers to greenbacks. Is not the foot of Captain Jack on his native 
lava? Is he tiot fighting for his native land, which his Maker gave him for a posession 
and inheritance, to him and his children and his children's children forever? 
Did not the Creator fence him and his race of red men from all the world? Did 
he not surround His quarter of the globe, with great seas, the frozen Arctic, the 
•stormy Atlantic and the broad Pacific? But three hinulred thousand red men now 
remain of the unnumbered tribes and countless millioas of the ancient and rightful 
possessors of the soil, to whom the Parent of all gave the limited bufliilo for food 
and clothing, and Indian Maze as his stafi'of life I From the Puritans at the Rock of 
Plymouth, to the perfidious Pizarro at Peru, they have been hunted down and ex- 
terminated like wild beastsof prey. To theemigrants from theOld World, wholanded 
on their shore, they gave the roas^tingear, for which they received in return, whiskey, 
the AVe of Hell; for their hospitality, they have received cruelty and have been taught 
the vices of civilized life, and now the President says that unless they become 
•'almost and altogether and ail at<ince" like him and his tribe, they are to beslaugii- 
tered, every mother and mother's son and daughter of them, until the poor savage 
Modoc Chief, may exclaim from his bed of lava to high heavens.with the anguish 
of the mighty Mingo Chief " their runs not a drop of my blood in the veins of 
any living being." 

General Grant, in cold l)lood killed every one of them. My cowardly scpiaws 
and my little papooses!" Recall your bloody order. I invoke you in the name 
of the Parent of all the races of men and the author of all good and good 
only, to rmiidermand that order! Cause it to be executed if you dare! I antici- 
[late the time of your death [which cannot be far off"] and I myself, a human 



being, .summon you to the bar of your Maker to answer for that horrid order. I 
summons as witness against you in that great assize, the exterminated Indian tribes 
and their chiefs, from King Philip of calvanistic Connecticut, known among his 
own people as Metamora, who was hunted from swamp to swamp, like a wild beast, 
his wigwam burnt and his women and children, as they ran from the flames, shot 
down before his seared eyeballs ; from the brave King of the Wampanoags, I 
say, down to Montezuma and the Incas that were roasted alive by the cruel 
Cortes from the accursed love of gold. 

If the Modoc mode of warfare is so abhorent to the humanity of yourself and 
military master, why do you, yourselves practice it against the wretched Digger 
Indians! Why did your Rebel Government first enlist the services of the 
Warm Spring Indians," with their merciless tomahawk, "scalping half a dozen 
Modocs," [were they men or women?] who had taken shelter under a rock? 
"Did they roast and eat the mangled victims of their murderous barbarity ?" I 
invoke from his grave, the spirit of John Marshall, once Chief Justice of the 
I'nited States. I bid him rise in no other ascension robe than his black silk gown 
as I used to see iiim seated in the Supreme Court, whose bench he illustrated by 
his learniTig, his wisdom, his humanity and his spotless reputation, and I bid him 
go alone, and in the black garb of Grief, to perform a national lustration ? For 
you and your master let their be no resurrection, not even that of a blue-bottle flv 
from a grub or maggot in a dung hill, but the hot burning wrath of your humane 
countrymen and women overwhelm you and your accursed memories, as Vesuvious 
did Pompeii and Herculaneum, in the height of their iniquities, and as Sodom 
and Gomorroh were sunk forever beneath the Dead Sea, mider lire and brimstone, 
rained down from Heaven. 

Who burnt Columbia, the capitoi of South Carolina? I believe vou did that 
deed of darkness or (onnived at it, and that I can prove it under your own hand 
writing, past the possibility of a doubt — I have your letter in black and white. 

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